Showing events on this day in years past that shaped history... just, not our history.

Friday, June 22, 2012

June 11, 1184 BC – Trojans Discover Achaean Ruse

Ten years of siege and warfare ended suddenly when
the Greeks of Achaea left the shores of Troy.
They had arrived under King Agamemnon of Mycenae, the greatest Greek
city-state, after Prince Paris of Troy had abducted Queen Helen of Sparta. Agamemnon, whose family had been cursed with
ill-fortune despite its might due to the sins of his ancestor Tantalus, and his
brother Menelaus had spent much of their youth in exile in the house of Spartan
King Tyndareus, whose daughter Clytemnestra married Agamemnon. The question of a spouse for Helen, however,
caused stir all over Greece as she was the daughter of Zeus by Queen Leda of
Sparta, whom he had seduced in the form of a swan. Her divine beauty drew in dozens of royal
suitors from as far away as Crete and Ithaca.
The Ithacan Prince Odysseus brought no gifts but an offering to solve
the matter, which had confounded Tyndareus as he was afraid any choice would
cause a war. All the suitors were
required to take an oath to defend the winner of Helen’s hand, thus ending any
chance of a violent quarrel. When the
oaths were confirmed by the sacrifice of a horse, Tyndareus chose Menelaus, who
had not attended and sent his brother Agamemnon in his place, to marry Helen.

Years passed quietly until Paris of Troy arrived
after having served as judge in a beauty contest for Hera, Athena, and
Aphrodite, choosing the last because of her bribe to award him the most
beautiful mortal woman in the world, Helen. Despite her husband and daughter, Hermione, Helen
fell in love with the prince and left. When
the betrayal was discovered, Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon called upon all
of the suitors to fulfill their oaths and declare war upon Troy. Many of the Greeks, now kings, were uneasy
about the expedition, but honor forced them to comply. Odysseus feigned madness for a short while to
avoid the war before finally complying.
Even Achilles, who had been hidden by his nymph mother Thetis in the
disguise of a young girl, drew up arms when he was discovered by Odysseus. The Greeks assembled a fleet of a thousand
ships and, after offending and finally appeasing the goddess Artemis, launched
their long assault against Troy’s strong walls with an estimated 100,000 men.

Battles in outlying cities and islands raged for
nine years without achieving more than a siege of Troy. Infighting grew up, such as Odysseus planting
a bribe from King Priam of Troy on Palamedes that resulted in the Greeks
stoning Palamedes for treason and later refusing justice to his father Nauplius
for the good of the war effort. Later, a
mutiny arose, but it was put down by strong words from Achilles. Soon after, Achilles himself decided to quit
the war when Agamemnon took his concubine, coming back only when his cousin Patroclus
was killed by the Trojan crown prince, Hector.
Achilles killed Hector, returned his body to Priam, and was killed by an
arrow from Paris after falling in love with a Trojan princess. Odysseus and Ajax of Salamis bickered over
Achilles’ armor, and Ajax, arguably the second-greatest Greek general, killed
himself upon losing. Odysseus recovered
the wounded Philoctetes, who used Heracles’ bow to shoot Paris, which caused
Helen to switch loyalties out of homesickness.
After his death, the Trojan princes fought over Helen’s hand, and
eventually Deiphobus won out, driving his brother Helenus into exile, where he
was caught by Odysseus and interrogated for the prophecies needed to be
fulfilled to destroy Troy.

After meeting the requirements, Odysseus launched a
scheme in which the Greek fleet would retreat as if in defeat. They left behind a giant horse statue made of
wood as a sacrifice to ensure safe travel home and Sinon, who would pretend to
be a Greek deserter trick the Trojans into bringing the horse inside the city. A festival began around the horse, though
some Trojans such as Laocoön, priest of Neptune, were suspicious. He cried out,

“O
wretched countrymen! what fury reigns?
What more than madness has possess'd your brains?
Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone?
And are Ulysses' arts no better known?”

Laocoön
threw his spear into the side of the statue, which proved to be hollow as he suggested,
and struck someone inside. Initially, the
Trojans (“fated to be blind”) ignored the cries inside as wood settling and
turned their attention to Sinon, who painted a picture of immortality for Troy
if they brought the horse inside the city walls. However, as Laocoön prepared to give in to
the crowd and sacrifice a bull in thanks, he discovered blood dripping from the
spear-wound. At last the Trojans
realized the ruse, and, after defeating sea serpents sent by Athena out of
vengeance, brought the horse inside, where they surrounded it with soldiers and
burned it. Inside the horse were the thirty
best warriors of the Greeks, including kings Diomedes of Argos, Ajax of Locris,
Menelaus of Sparta, Menestheus of Athens, and Odysseus himself. The resulting massacre wiped out a generation
of Greek leadership, leaving only a few to trickle back to their homes in
Greece, which turned into civil war as the people sought vengeance on Agamemnon
and the survivors.

With order restored, the Trojans began rebuilding
their empire with the aid of their allies from the war such as the Amazons of
Asia and assuming control of lands conquered en route to Troy by Memnon of
Ethiopia, Priam’s stepbrother. Upon
Priam’s death, cunning Deiphobus became king and launched an invasion of Greece
that devastated the land and pushed Greek survivors into the western
Mediterranean. The Trojans came into
contest with the Phoenicians, conquering their principal city of Tyre with the
aid of the Hebrew warrior-king David and sending more refugees toward Dido’s
kingdom of Carthage. In the 800s BC,
Trojan imperial power was broken by Assyrians, and the city became a smaller
kingdom dominating the Hellespont, often at war with the nearby Greek
city-states. After the overthrow of the
Babylonians by the Medes and Persians, Cyrus and Darius invaded Asia Minor,
overwhelming Troy and marching on the European nations of Macedon and Scythia. The Greeks rejoiced at seeing their old enemy
Troy finally subservient and gladly established relations with the Persian
Empire. Using Greek support, the
Persians were able to solidify their control over the Macedonians and Thracians
of the western Black Sea. Meanwhile, the
seafaring Greeks spent centuries fighting with the Carthaginians over
domination of the Mediterranean, eventually falling as Carthaginian unity
overwhelmed haphazard Greek alliances.
Carthaginians continued expansion northward to the British Isles and
southward to Africa until they, too, fell under conquests by Goths, who were in
turn conquered by Vikings. Through it
all, the Eternal City of Troy has stood, most lately as the capital of the
Great Turkish Empire.

--

In reality, according to Virgil’s Aeneid,
Laocoön’s spear did not strike anyone.
The Trojans brought the statue into the city, and Odysseus and his men sneaked
out that night to open the gates to the Greek army, which had returned
secretly. Troy fell on a date calculated by Eratosthenes of Cyrene, though much of the
fortune gained by the Greeks would be lost as gods continued to curse
them. Trojan survivors led by Aeneas
were believed to have contributed to the founding of Rome, while the Greeks became
a major world power. They conquered the
Persians through Alexander the Great, resulting in the Hellenization of the
Middle East, and were conquered themselves by Rome, who adopted much of their civilization.